Greenhame spun around in the doorway and met my eyes. “Why do you call it, the big deep heavy? Why did you say that?”
I shrugged and raised my brow, “Just a saying.” He continued to stare at me intensely. “Is there a problem?” I asked.
“No. Not at all. Just a curious phrase. Let me see now, how shall we say it?” He laid a finger across his chin and mouthed out the sounds, “Thivy bag hedepee.”
“Another language?”
“Not exactly, Doctor. Rearrange the letters. Thivy bag hedepee.”
“Ah, another scramble,” I humored him. I repeated the sounds and tried to move the letters around in my head. William’s expression then turned sympathetic. He nodded.
“You see, when you’ve had time to think like me, such things are very easy, thivy bag hedepee—the big deep heavy. Farewell.”
After one of his curious nods he sauntered down the corridor and began to hum a strangely familiar melody.
Turning, I looked into my office. The floor was still cluttered. Stooping and moving the mess onto a chair I began the organization process. My hands shook as I did this. My nature has always been plagued with a need for order before I begin the day. I separated the billing forms from my patient documents, the to-do lists from the itemized spending sheet for my family’s newly built home and found my glasses missing. I dropped down to look beneath my desk and found more remnants of Greenhame’s episode, but no glasses. They were tucked down in the cushion of my chair when I rounded my desk to sit. Placing them on my nose and studying the organized piles of my life, I put everything back in place, sighed and felt at ease again.
I looked around for any final arrangement before my first appointment. There was nothing to be done but wait. Sipping my coffee I stared at the grey-green plaid wallpaper of my office, straight lines, woven columns and uniform colors. I thought back to the day, two years ago, when I ordered the wallpaper. My wife hated my choice. “It’s awfully formal, isn’t it, Loche?” I remember her saying. “But then again, it’s very you. I wish you would lighten up a bit. Or show some passion. I’d love that. How about burgundy or red. Something with some life.”
“Shades of crimson wouldn’t calm my patients,” I told her, “green is the perfect middling hue.”
Her response, “They look like prison bars. And the color looks like the inside of some institution for the mentally ill.”
I remember replying, “Well. . . what do think I do for a living?”
“I wish you would write.”
Over the intercom came Carol’s voice, “Dr. Newirth, Beth Winship is here to see you.”
“Send her back,” I said rising to my feet.
Bethany Leona Winship opened the door with great care and peeked her head in. She wore a red blouse.
“Hello, Doctor,” she whispered.
“Come in, Beth,” I said, “come and sit down.”
She was both crying and laughing. “Oh my word,” she said, her eyes glinting and wet, “I know that I get up and I get down, but this is ridiculous.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Sure, I’m manic depressive—but I’ve got to tell you, the highs are amazing sometimes,” she said, wiping her nose and cheeks with a tissue. “There are times that I believe I can do anything.” She sat down quickly, her face shining and grinning. I noted her energetic movement and focused posture, shoulders taut and back straight. Bethany was sixty-five and behaved and dressed sometimes as if she was a college student. Her body was long and fit and the only signs of age one might notice were the wrinkles that haunted her eyes. She was having what she called a good day. A day when the illness was seemingly one long release of serotonin.
I smiled at her. “Tell me,” I said.
“You know, I wish that I could tell you. I wish I could so badly. But I’m afraid that this spot of joy must be kept to myself.” She then shook her head so that her long hair danced around her shoulders, and she laughed. “It just means so much to be needed. When someone tells you that you belong to them,” she raised her fingers and formed quotation marks in the air, “saving angel. There’s nothing quite like being told that you are the only thing in the world that can heal someone of their pain.”
“Someone has made you feel special?” I asked.
“Special? What a terrible word. How about, needed, wanted. How about antidote, or saving grace, or medicine, or soul mate. I can’t begin to tell you how good I feel right now.”
I nodded, “This friend must be important to you.”
Bethany’s smile faded. “Yes,” she said. “But I can’t tell you anything more. It’s really not a good idea.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything more, Bethany. I am just delighted that you’re feeling well today.”
“I feel good.”
“Good then. But let’s keep in mind, that the other side will come. You’re having a good day so let’s learn what we can from it so that when a bad one comes we’re able to—”
“Not now,” she said. “I think I just want to roll around in this for awhile and not worry about the roller coaster drop, okay?”
I studied her face and slowly nodded. “Very well,” I said.
“So how have you been?” she asked, smiling. “How is that little boy of yours? Any new pictures of the little guy?”
That afternoon I arrived at my appointment with Dr. Marcus Rearden. He sat behind me and his voice was calm and filled with thoughtful question marks. “Anymore dreams?”
I laid on the couch staring up at the tiled ceiling. Each line was perfectly straight, parallel and green. I’ve spent nearly every Wednesday afternoon since I began my practice talking to Dr. Rearden from his grey couch. He knows more about me than my wife does.
“A few,” I replied.
“Still dark?” He asked.
I didn’t answer. My first cases were heavy trauma, abused children, and since those days my sleep has suffered. My dreams were often haunted with their stories—with what their eyes had seen—and the simple words they would use to describe their terrors—words like mommy and daddy combined in broken phrases with burned me, hit me, touched me—cases of violence and neglect—it took much for me to keep the painful reality of it locked into some kind of order—so I could help in some way. Marcus often brought up the Three Heavy What Ifs. The three things that therapists fear when faced with extreme cases. What if I can’t help? What if I can’t handle it? And what if I go in with them? Going in with them meant becoming like them—becoming the very thing we long to cure. And every therapist I know that has worked with kids has faced at least one of those what ifs, if not failed at all three. But we keep our courage and we practice what we’ve learned. We organize the pain.
I still see a couple of traumatized children in my current practice, but nothing like those in my early training. Most of my clients now suffer from what Marcus and I call the dim light parade. The average person suffering everything from depression and obsessive compulsive disorder to body dysmorphia and ADD. Certainly these are maladies not to be taken lightly, but because the majority of these clients are adults and are able to conceptualize and reason, unlike young children, we feel that we can shine a light upon the parade of their distress, albeit dim. At least we can reach them (most of the time). Child cases are pushed down into deeper water.
But my dreams of late have not been so dark. Maybe that is because I have become much better at keeping difficult memories placed into their proper compartments. But I think I’ve been spared of nightmares more often because of my obsession with the implausible goal of curing mental illness. Something that my tolerant mentor, Marcus Rearden, might see as a symbolic distraction that keeps me centered. But I see the cure as a lighthouse, and I am way out to sea, floating on my back in a dream.
“I am still very frustrated though, Marc,” I said finally.
“With your profession, or my last move?”
I gave a little laugh. “Both,” I said.
We both turned in th
e direction of the chessboard near the door. The game had been in progress for over a month. It was my turn to make a move, after my appointment, of course. Rearden was an incredible chess player, and after each of our many games, I tried to learn his strategies. One day, I’d often tell him, I’ll figure out how you do that.
“Ah,” he replied. “Don’t be frustrated. Chess is a game I’ve played for many, many years. You’ll get the hang of it. So, too, will you get used to the profession—ours is not an easy job. There are no cures for our clients. Cures don’t exist for us.”
I nodded. “All that I’ve studied, and all that I know, and they keep coming back.”
“That’s a good thing,” he said. I could hear his humorous tone, “If they got completely well, who’d pay our bills? We are in the profession of helping them to cope. We can’t eliminate their pain, but we can make it easier to steer around it.”
I pictured the old man Rearden in my mind’s eye. Dr. Marcus Rearden, pale, gaunt, professional, and frighteningly intelligent. He’d spent his life sitting behind some of the world’s most dangerous criminals, listening. At our first introduction at a conference in Los Angeles he pointed his spectacles at me with a curious jab and said to those gathered near, “So, this is the future of the mind? Well, I’m very pleased to meet you, Dr. Loche Newirth. I hope we can stumble upon some new thoughts together.” Of course, Rearden continued practicing in LA until he had finally had enough. “Too much darkness,” he told me when he moved up to Sandpoint, Idaho, ten years ago. Since then he had tried to focus on what his wife would call a safer life, and she was glad for it. “It’s time to begin thinking about lighter things and try to ease away from the dark side of man.” What if I can’t help, can’t handle it, or I go in with them—Rearden claimed that he began to fail each one. His clients now were similar to mine, everyday people learning to cope. The dim light parade.
As my education continued, Dr. Rearden listened meditatively from a chair behind my back. I don’t think I could bear to see how many times he has winced listening to my idealistic ramblings. Rearden knew me. Sometimes more than I’d like to admit. I wish I could say that I knew him just as well, but he is a professional. He kept a screen between us. A slightly transparent one, but a barrier nonetheless—it kept our relationship from developing into true friendship.
“I won’t give up,” I said. “I want the ability to cure, not ease. I want the knowledge to heal and repair. I know that everyone suffers. Whether it’s a disease, a mental disorder or just the plain problems of being human. Each and everyone of us wonders about why we exist and why there’s no clear answer. I hear that question so often, Marc. Why? I want the answer.” And there it was. The reverie. Me floating on the dream—the lighthouse blinking from the oncoming reef. I could feel him wince.
“I hear that question, too. And I often ask it.”
“Don’t you wish you had that answer?”
“No,” he sighed.
“No?” I said incredulously. “Come now. If you had such answers, think of all the help you could provide.”
“Loche, we aren’t philosophers, we are psychologists.”
“I’m not talking about philosophy, Marc. I am merely pointing out that we, as psychologists, should pursue an answer, not an excuse. I want to steer right through the problems instead of going around them. I sometimes wish that I could manifest it —in writing, if you like. You know, a sort of mission statement, or a story, to create the cure.”
Marc drew a heavy sigh. “I used to think like you do. I used to be frustrated with my clients, because they wouldn’t get well. For some of them, the drastic cases, there is no hope at all. When all those pills came in I felt certain that we’d bridged the gap between the mental and the physical. We found that the chemical reactions in the brain were lacking this or that particular chemical, so we were able to prescribe it. Then, we found out that some of the medication was addictive. Much like the addictive question that we began with.” He let out another heavy sigh, “And now the whole world is addicted to being unwell. Television commercials pound viewers with each and every little malady and boast a fix. This pill will make you smile if you find smiling tough, this pill will fix this or that, this pill will make you smaller—ha, and this one will make you harder. Goodness. We’ve not bridged a gap. It isn’t a gap. It is a canyon that society is digging. A wide, deep hole, and we can’t see the bottom. And that hole, Loche, is too big to bridge. Our society must change in order to find some kind of hope. And if history has taught us anything, society doesn’t seem to be heading toward health. So we must steer around the holes we make—and pull people out of them. That is our job.”
“I don’t think an answer is beyond our reach, Marc. I want to know. I will know.” My eyes closed. I could see the pale white dot of the lighthouse flickering from the shoreline. “I will know.”
Rearden’s chair creaked. I then felt him sit down on the edge of the couch. “What would you do if you had the answer as you call it?”
I opened my eyes and caught a new expression from the old man, his head bowed down in sorrow. “Where do you want me to start?” I asked.
“The beginning,” he said, with his eyes still pointed down.
“I watched my mother battle depression, Marc. She was tortured her entire adult life. She died depressed. I grew up not knowing why she would suddenly break down in tears, why all she would want to do was sleep—why a woman that could at one moment seem overwhelmed with joy, and in the next be threatening suicide. And all the so-called professionals gave her nothing but advice, and pills. They experimented on her with every new coping drug, and offered nothing more than, ‘Maybe this time the drugs will work.’ But it’s not only because of my mother that I’m reaching beyond my grasp, as some might say. The children in my early training—that was almost too much for me to continue—and there’s more. There are people that could be brought to health. Health, Marc. To provide for each person the ability to live their lives through compassion, empathy and kindness. True well-being. The health of the human mind would bring with it a new consciousness. The elimination of these things that we’ve identified as mental disorders would change the world. There is a cure to our condition. There is an answer.”
“You seem to think that the answer would be favorable. A hopeful one.”
“The truth is always the best answer.”
He looked at me. His eyes were aged and tired, “Is it? The truth is always an answer, but not always hopeful.”
“You say that like you’ve discovered something.” I studied his expression. It was tinged with sadness. Something was wrong. In the last few weeks I had noticed a change in him—a manner that didn’t seem to fit.
“No,” he said as he rose and walked to his desk. “I’ve learned quite a few things through the years. Some things, I hope you’ll never have to confront. I’ve learned only recently that a man must experience his true nature to truly know himself. He must be—and not simply imagine being. Face the fear is the dictum of our world these days. We celebrate youth. A carefree youth was something I never really had. You couldn’t describe me as a risk taker—never passionate, if that’s the right word.” Rearden looked gloomily out the window, “I’ve been endeavoring as of late to be passionate—and it is dangerous. One can risk his very life for it. But, truth, answers, questions are all a part of our natures. They define our lives. Without them, life would be quite plain and unadorned. When I solve a frustrating riddle, I often look for another to pass the time. I love the riddle of man’s mind. I’ve endeavored to solve it, as you have, but I’ve learned that some riddles aren’t meant to be answered.”
I noted the tone in his voice. A tone that told me he was reliving some nightmarish session with a murderer.
“Some riddles are there forever.”
I looked at him. The lines in his face were deeper than I had ever noticed. His slender limbs seemed to creak like his chair when he moved.
“How could I possibly benefit
if there were answers to this life? I’m nearly through it,” he said. “What if the answer is, Over and out? Winked out of existence. Nothing beyond. Have a nice day. Would I feel better about the approaching shadow of death?” He looked at me, “Or would I pine for the pain and passion of living? Like young love. Oh yes, young love.” His smile was sad. “Instead of answers Loche, you just may need a few days up at your cabin.”
I looked across the room and thought. “We’ll see,” I said quietly. “How is Elanor?”
He shifted slightly. “The wife is fine,” he said. “We’re getting along as we always have.”
Nodding to the chessboard I said, “Knight to queen six.”
He rose and crossed the room pushing his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose. He moved the pieces. “Ah, dreaming again are you, Loche? Nice try, though,” He said, smiling as he slid his bishop across the board to take my queen.
I saw the road to my home, rushing by in a blur. The October sun was setting behind me, and I could smell hearth smoke in the chilled air—the fall. My car sped through the deep green woods. Frustrated, I thought of William Greenhame, Beth Winship and the five other clients that came to visit me that day. Why couldn’t I bring these people to health? Restore their hope? I thought about Marcus Rearden and our usual exchange—is there an answer, or not? But these inadequate feelings were quite natural to me—the rational answer lay in my clients’ respective environments and their biological and genetic configurations. Their minds were injured, and I was the trusted counselor to figure out how to treat the injuries. Help them to organize. Cope.
To do that, a psychologist must confront the particular illness as if it were as intelligent, as knowing and as conscious as the subject that hosts it. I recalled listening to a speech by Dr. Marcus Rearden before we had met, “I’m talking about an exorcism, ladies and gentlemen. Not anything supernatural, mind you, but rather the removal of the behavioral patterns that the disease creates within the brain. It is not like a cut on the arm, but it is exactly like a cut on the arm. The only difference is that this kind of cut can think. This kind of wound can learn to cut again. This kind of cut can talk itself into never healing. It has hands, eyes, experiences and a wealth of understanding of its host. But it also understands you. The medical doctor uses sutures and bandages. We psychologists use words. You must outthink it to stop the bleeding, and try to pull the knife from its hand. I wish I could offer you something more than mere words. If I knew how to stop the pain, the bleeding, the hopelessness, I would most certainly share it. I’d share it with the world.”
The Invasion of Heaven, Part One of the Newirth Mythology Page 6